Month: March 2016

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Putin: First as Farce …

An untitled and undated image of Putin available at http://www.trbimg.com/img-55071a22/turbine/la-fg-putin-appearance-20150316

translated by Maria Brock

To be published in Russian in the April issue of the Сеанс magazine.

A few days ago came the 16th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s rule, which is traditionally celebrated by endless fantasies on the theme of ‘Russia after Putin’. This intellectual exercise, which is constantly reproduced by the liberal opposition media, has an obvious therapeutic function: no one believes that it will actually end, and therefore the question of the end of this era, as it is beginning to seem endless, becomes the subject of utopias and anti-utopias.

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A Nation of Masters?: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Bulgarian Memory Wars

“Death to Turkey” and “Turkey is Not Europe.” Graffiti in Pernik, Bulgaria 2012.

We are grateful to Bilten, where this article will appear in BCS.

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“Common sites of memory are not sites of common memory”, prof. Lilyana Deyanova (Obektiv, October 2012)

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A few years ago, the Bulgarian sociologist Andrei Raitchev observed that with the establishment of a broad consensus among all parties on the necessity for liberal pro-market reforms, the only scope left for political antagonisms properly so-called, is the past. If the future is irreversibly locked for liberal democracy, then parties can project and act out their differences on the terrain of conflicting interpretations of the past.

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Cuius Regio, Eius Religio

Monthly Review, March 3, 2016

Turkish Islamists used to dismiss the European Union as a “Christian club.”  Their claim has acquired greater plausibility now that EU leaders have appointed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Europe’s refugee gatekeeper, bolstering his Islamist government in order to keep Muslims out of Europe.  Such was the import of the agreement the two sides reached last November, in which EU governments promised to pay Turkey three billion euros over two years to cover the costs of detaining and accommodating asylum seekers.

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Refugees & Volunteering: Beyond the Culture of Giving

Having returned from my volunteering activities in the Balkans, I started reflecting on certain aspects of refugee aid in a number of schools, universities, and in my interviews. After my talk, some of my listeners would come and say: ok, you’ve kind of discouraged us from helping them. However, their reaction stemmed from a misunderstanding, because after all, my goal was to present some of the problematic aspects of volunteer aid work that came from my critical self-reflection.

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“And We Go Willingly, Like a Lamb to the Slaughter”: Migrant Labor in the EU (an Interview with Romanian Construction Worker Bogdan Droma)

Bogdan Droma has worked in Berlin for three months, between August and October 2014, at building the famous Mall of Berlin. As a result of weeks of work going unpaid, as well as of various forms of abusive treatment, he protested together with other workers between November 2014 and February 2015 on an almost daily basis, turning the popular designation of the mall into the Mall of Shame. The case of the Mall of Berlin workers is not an isolated one.

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Towards an “Orbanization” of Croatia?

This article was originally published in the Croatian edition of Le Monde diplomatique. LeftEast thanks the editors for allowing us to carry this translation.

The election of the new Croatian government has caused a great storm in a part of the local public, despite the fact that it seems that the political future will remain firmly closed within the framework of the long-dominant discourse of ‘transition.’ In the absence of any serious developmental alternative, the only tool for distinguishing between the main political actors remains the intensification of culture wars.

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A Lesson in Self-Immolation (Film Review)

Note from the LeftEast editors: a Bulgarian version of this text first appeared on the pages of Kultura weekly newspaper.

Christina Grozeva and Peter Valchanov’s The Lesson (2014) is probably the first feature film that explains the Bulgarian winter of discontent in 2013. It tells the story of a “normal” week in the life Nadezhda (Margarita Gosheva), a Bulgarian school teacher from a small town. While she tries to punish one of her students who committed theft in a morally instructive way, life teaches the instructor a much more serious moral lesson.

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Victoria Lomasko: Russian Truckers Prepare for Nationwide Strike

Chronicle of a Troubled Time by Victoria Lomasko The Khimki Truckers’ Camp Readies Itself for Nationwide Strike

Translated and published by TheRussianReader.

Truckers’ camp in Khimki

Sergei Vladimirov, a coordinator at the Khimki truckers’ camp: “In the early days, we pushed everybody away and were suspicious of each other. We didn’t know each other yet.”

Andrei Bazhutin, another coordinator at the camp: “In the early days, chaos prevailed, but now the guys are like soldiers.

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What Do Russian Leftists Dream About?: A Collective Portrait

Who are today’s leftists? What’s the problem with liberals and patriots? What are the political goals of the left and how to achieve them? Do leftists want to bring back the USSR?/ dekulakize everybody?/ abolish the difference between the smart and the stupid? What does one need to read/ watch to become leftist? The Furfur magazine published an extensive interview with contemporary Russian leftists, members of the Russian Socialist Movement (RSD): the journalist Sergei Vilkov, the poet Kirill Medvedev, the publicist Ivan Ovsiannikov, the psychoanalyst Vladimir Plotnikov, the historian Alexander Reznik, as well as such figures of Russian leftist culture as the philosopher Oxana Timofeeva and the writer Alexei Tsvetcoff.